


we wait all day / for night to come / and it comes like a hunter

by aunt_zelda



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Amnesia, Body Horror, Coping, Corpses, F/M, Flashbacks, Force-Feeding, Gore, Memories, Memory Loss, Nightmares, Recovery, Repressed Memories, Rituals, Trauma, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 08:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13498294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: Molly tries to recover his memories of his life before the circus.





	we wait all day / for night to come / and it comes like a hunter

**Author's Note:**

> So a popular theory right now is that Molly has amnesia of some sort, and can't remember his life before the circus. With his blood hunter status, I wondered how he might have become a blood hunter and how that drinking ritual went. This is just one of many ideas I have. Only time will tell what actually happened, and I'm very excited to find out!
> 
> I might have gone a big overboard with the disturbing imagery there at the end. If I've neglected to warn for anything please contact me here or on my tumblr to tell me, and I'll happily add more tags.

_It’s dark._

_But that’s not the first thing he remembers._

_He remembers the hands._

_Hands on him. Hands gripping his arms, his shoulders, his legs, his horns. Hands pinning him down. Hands leaving bruises. Hands with nails that scratch his skin._

_It is dark and there are hands holding him down._

~*~

Molly wakes up from many restless nights with that memory in mind. 

He remembers so little of what came before. He clings to the memory. Though it makes his stomach roil and his skin sweat he still holds on. Darkness and hands …

Something happened to him. Something his mind won’t let him remember yet. 

The circus moves on and Molly travels with it. 

~*~

_It’s dark._

_He’s pinned down by hands._

_The air is cold._

_Someone presses something warm to his mouth._

~*~

Molly worries at what might be lurking in his memory. Perhaps what’s buried should stay that way. Perhaps his mind is protecting him. Perhaps remembering will be too painful to bear. 

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. 

Molly clings to the shreds of memory and meditates before sleep. 

~*~

_He shivers from the cold._

_Warmth. A cup._

_Something warm inside. Warm and steaming._

_He sips and gags. The taste is foul._

_The cup presses again._

_The hands grip his horns and his neck. The hands press over his nose and force his jaw open._

_The hands make him drink._

_His stomach roils._

_He burns._

~*~

Molly has no appetite the morning after he recovers that memory. 

His throat is so parched by afternoon that Molly accepts a cup of steaming hot tea from one of the sisters. He barely makes it to the edge of the camp before vomiting the tea up. 

Yasha finds him, kneeling on the ground and spitting bile onto the grass. She tucks Molly’s hair behind his ears, lays a strong hand on his shoulder, and helps him to his feet when he’s stopped heaving. 

Before bed Molly hesitates before meditation. He goes to bed hungry and aching. 

~*~

_Pain._

_Agony._

_Is this death?_

_No. This is a birth. He is being reborn from the inside out._

_He wants to beg for death. He wants to beg for an end to this horrific suffering._

_He can only scream._

_And scream._

_And scream._

_He tastes blood in his mouth._

_He can no longer scream._

_The pain surges to even greater heights._

~*~

Molly wakes drenched in sweat and coughing. His limbs shake as he staggers up from bed. He cannot return to his cot, not tonight. He throws on a jacket and leaves.

The circus is as quiet as it ever is. Night guards huddle by fires at the edges of the camp. Someone plucks on a lute in a distant tent. A baby whimpers while being soothed by a parent. Two, perhaps three, amorous-minded people occupy their evening’s rest with something other than sleep. Someone throws a log onto a fire and sends crackling sparks up into the night sky. 

Molly finds Yasha’s tent. While Molly has a caravan he shares with excess equipment and costumes, Yasha insisted on a tent when she arrived. 

Yasha is sharpening her sword by lantern-light. She sits cross-legged on the ground, naked to the waist, a blanket wrapped around her hips.

Wordlessly, she puts her blade away when she sees Molly approach. Yasha beckons him inside the tent, closing the flap after him as he enters. 

He kisses her, rough and desperate. Yasha endures his attack for a long moment before dragging him down onto her bedroll. The blanket slips off of her, rendering her naked and towering over him. She pulls at his clothing, freeing his cock and stroking it to hardness with quick, efficient movements. He bucks his hips up and she mounts him. 

It’s not a lengthy process. He fumbles between their bodies, trying to find spots that please her. Yasha pins his hands to her bedroll and thrusts downwards again and again. Molly comes with a shudder and a soft moan. Yasha rolls off of him and rubs at herself with her fingers. She groans when she reaches her peak and slumps down beside him, laying a strong arm over his belly. 

Molly tugs the blanket up over their sweat-slick bodies. 

Yasha starts to snore. 

Her snoring, and the distant sounds of the circus at night, soothes Molly back to sleep.

~*~

_He is alive._

_He is alive because the dead do not feel pain and all he can feel is pain._

_He does not feel cold or heat or hands. He only feels pain._

_Voices rough in his ears. He strains to make sense of them._

_“Failure” he hears. “Another mistake” he hears. “You owe me a silver” he hears._

_He cannot see. He cannot speak. He can only feel the agony of life._

_“… with the others” he hears._

_He feels the hands on him again. The hands haul him up and down. The hands drag him down cold stone. The hands lift him up …_

_He is falling. He is thudding down onto something soft and hard and horrifying._

_He opens his eyes and sees Death grinning at him. He sees the rotting face of what was once a man. Beyond that, he can see another, and another, and another. Skulls leer at him. Putrid flesh oozes beneath him._

_So much pain. He can’t think. He can barely breathe. The stench of Death is almost suffocating._

_A new body falls down beside him: a woman with dark hair. He remembers her cursing their captors. He remembers her prayers to a god who did not listen._

_Another body falls: a man with pale skin. The arm slumps over his legs. He remembers how the man wept and pleaded._

_He heaves himself away. He slides down the pile. He crashes into the bones at the edges. He crawls._

_Water._

_Cold and wet and rushing past._

_A river._

_Fumbling, he finds a half rotted barrel. It floats. He clings to it._

_He crawls into the river. He floats._

_The river takes him far away._


End file.
